The website I work for, Tweakers.net, has been bought by VNU Business Media. The news became public last monday. The founder of the site, Femme Taken, and the current director, Daniel Kegel, decided to sold Tweakers.net because they think VNU gives Tweakers.net the opportunity to grow further and improve some parts of the site.
While this news is still relatively hot, today there was a new announcenemt. VNU will probably be sold to a group of private investors. I’m not sure if this is very good news for Tweakers.net, but on the other hand, this announcement has been expected for a few weeks already. Among one of the private investor firms is the company Carlyle. People who have watched the documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 should know this name, because this is the company which is involved with the defence industry in the US and has some US politicians on the payroll. The most famous one is the former US president George Bush sr. While a lot of people now maybe think this company is entirely evil (which is may be), it should be mentioned that the number of investments in defence companies is only one 1% and the focus of Carlyle is telecom, media and real estate. Before VNU is aquired by this group of companies, the current shareholders have to accept the offer of the companies and sell at least 95% of the shares (I guess).